Ukraine's top diplomat to boycott OSCE meeting over Russia's Lavrov attending - Kyiv

Ukraine said on Tuesday its foreign minister would boycott a meeting of the OSCE in North Macedonia this week because Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov intends to take part for the first time during the 21-month full-scale invasion. Russia's top diplomat has said he would join the foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) if Bulgaria opens its air space for him.

Ukraine said on Tuesday its foreign minister would boycott a meeting of the OSCE in North Macedonia this week because Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov intends to take part for the first time during the 21-month full-scale invasion.

Russia's top diplomat has said he would join the foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) if Bulgaria opens its air space for him. He said some Western countries had requested meetings with him. Bulgarian air space is closed to Russian aircraft as part of European Union sanctions imposed in response to Russia's war in Ukraine.

"The Ukrainian delegation will not participate in the OSCE ministerial meeting at the level of the minister of foreign affairs," Oleh Nikolenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, wrote in a statement on Facebook. The meeting of the 57-member organisation is due to take place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1 in Skopje.

In a statement, Nikolenko said that Russia abused the rules of consensus in the organisation, resorted to "blackmail and open threats" and had also been holding three Ukrainian OSCE representatives in prison for 500 days. "In such conditions, the presence of a Russian delegation at the ministers meeting at minister-level for the first time after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine will only deepen the crisis into which Russia has driven the OSCE," he said.

Russia has in the past accused the West of undermining the OSCE through the "reckless enlargement" of NATO.